Small Traditions LLC/SCANDAL UPDATE

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I just don't understand how you guys see this as PWCC's (or insert any consignment company here) responsibility though. They don't have access to the data. This is ebay's platform, ebay's data, and ebay's responsibility. Are you really expecting consignment companies to crawl through all of their listings and webscrape user ID data (which is against ebay's TOS) and bid history and follow who bids on what, and try to track people down? You think they should have their own internal BODA team? Do you really not realize how ridiculous these expectations are in practice? I'll repeat: they don't have access to the database where all of this information is stored! Only eBay does. How does this point never land with you guys?

PWCC forces you to enter your eBay user ID on your vault account, and they send you a stern warning email if that account ID bids on one of its own listings, and then they will ban you if you do it again. This is more than any other consignment company does, as far as I'm aware. They also block all non paying bidders. And even then, they are limited to just 5,000 user IDs. What more can they do?

Maybe this will help...

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Leon

Maybe this will help...

With all due respect, I've read this screen shot dozens of times. It's a nothing burger as even Peter above acknowledged. This is not a communication where Brent is trying to get someone to shill their auction. This is him reprimanding Courtney for string bidding and not taking the high bid during the stages of an auction where the bids don't even matter anyhow.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I wish people would stop bringing up that text message lol because it really doesn't help the case against Brent.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I wish people would stop bringing up that text message lol because it really doesn't help the case against Brent.

It doesn't help because people are focusing on the wrong thing. It's not that he told him he would be outbid (I could certainly say that about lots in my auction, especially fairly early on, without feeling like I was risking impropriety) it's the fact that Courtney WAS THE CONSIGNOR OF THE ITEM IN QUESTION. Or has age dulled my memory and he wasn't, in which case why does Brent care how he bids?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

It doesn't help because people are focusing on the wrong thing. It's not that he told him he would be outbid (I could certainly say that about lots in my auction, especially fairly early on, without feeling like I was risking impropriety) it's the fact that Courtney WAS THE CONSIGNOR OF THE ITEM IN QUESTION. Or has age dulled my memory and he wasn't, in which case why does Brent care how he bids?

Brent cared because, as the text itself notes, people were bitching to him about the string bidder bidding only up to the point of the high bidder's max bid but not taking over the lead.

If Courtney was the consignor I don't remember that.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

I thought he bought the card from Brent at a National, discovered it was cleaned and Brent offered to sell it for him to get him his money back. Again maybe memory doesn't serve me correctly, and I hate to have to wade through all that old crap again. That's worse than trying to spot shill bidders in one of my auctions...

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

I thought he bought the card from Brent at a National, discovered it was cleaned and Brent offered to sell it for him to get him his money back. Again maybe memory doesn't serve me correctly, and I hate to have to wade through all that old crap again. That's worse than trying to spot shill bidders in one of my auctions...

I thought he sold it through Goldin and that John Perez bought it and was the consignor of the auction in question. Could be wrong but fairly sure.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Leon

Maybe this will help...

Am aware of and have seen this screen shot before, and regardless of the specific content, does anyone find it the least bit disconcerting that the owner of an AH/consignment company would be actively communicating with bidders like this during live auctions of items being sold by their company? Just off the top of my head, I know we have various members on here who also operate/own AH/consignment companies. Would be very interested to hear their takes on this and if they would (or have) ever have communicated with bidders during one of their ongoing auctions like this.

And in regards to people posting that an AH/consignment company doesn't have the time or ability to watch and monitor their auctions for suspicious and potential shill bidding activity, how then would the actual owner of the AH/consignment company ever have time to engage in communications such as this one? Clearly from the content of the messages it would seem that there had been some prior ongoing communications to what we see posted. So again, if this owner has the time to be aware of this one particular auction and the potential suspicious bidding activity in it, they would most certainly seem to have time to watch and pay attention to other auctions of theirs for suspicious shill bidding activities as well.